I’ll go first. Mine is that I can’t stand the Deadpool movies. They are self aware and self referential to an obnoxious degree. It’s like being continually reminded that I am in a movie. I swear the success of that movie has directly lead to every blockbuster having to have a joke every 30 seconds
Films where I don’t recognize a single actor among the whole crew are almost always better than ones where I’ve seen such and such actor in other movies. Just more immersive. And even if they’re not the best actors I’d much prefer that over whatever the hell Chris Prat or Tom Cruise or Leo D are up to.
So many well known actors play themselves playing the character.
Tom Cruise has employees rewrite movies he’ll be in to make his part more, and more in his style.
He has more acting range and ability than so many other actors
Especially when there are a few examples of amazing actors that you can know and still sometimes struggle to recognize them in their characters. Like Gary Oldman, and … uh… OK well I’m not in a movie headspace, but he’s not the only one!
Tons of lesser names that play great side/background characters and it’s hard to tell, too, so I totally agree others need chances at lead characters.
Those are the actors I’m never tired of because their characters are almost always unique characters.
This is basically what I told people when I started to watch some of the most amazing international and documentary cinema in the early 00s. Ciudade de Deus, La Cité d’enfants Perdus, Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain, La Vita è Bella, Der Untergang, Lola Rennt, 올드 보이, Mononoke Hime, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Whale Rider. Documentaries by Adam Curtis or Errol Morris. So many people just don’t know.
True to an extent, there are a few famous actors out there who are genuinely good at taking on different roles and immersing you in the character. A great example is Jim Carrey. Obviously I know Ace Ventura and Truman Burbanks are the same person, but it doesn’t feel like that when you’re watching them. They might share similar qualities, but they’re clearly different characters.
Anthony Hopkins is a better example IMO. Or goddamn Gary Oldman…
Terminator is better than Terminator 2, and as cool as it is Terminator 2 should never have been made (or should have a different script).
I know the mob is raising the pitchfork, but hear me out, there are two main ways time travel can solve the grandparent paradox, these are Singular Timeline (i.e. something will prevent you from killing your grandfather) or Multiple Timeline (you kill him but in doing so you created an alternate timeline). Terminator 2 is clearly a MT model, because they delay the rise of Skynet, but Terminator is a ST movie. The way you can understand it’s an ST is because the cause-consequences form a perfect cycle (which couldn’t happen on an MT story), i.e. Reese goes back to save Sarah -> Reese impregnates Sarah and teaches her how to defend herself from Terminators and avoid Skynet -> Sarah gives birth to and teaches John -> John uses the knowledge to start a resistance -> The resistance is so strong that Skynet sends a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah -> Reese goes back to save Sarah…
The awesome thing about Terminator is how you only realise this at the end of the Movie, that nothing they did mattered, because that’s what happened before, the timeline is fixed, humanity will suffer but they’ll win eventually.
If Terminator was a MT then the cycle breaks, i.e. there needs to be a beginning, a first time around when the original timeline didn’t had any time travelers. How did that timeline looked like? John couldn’t exist, which means that sending a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah was not possible, Reese couldn’t have gone back without the Terminator technology, which they wouldn’t have unless the resistance was winning, and if they are winning without John, the Terminator must have gone back to kill someone else and when Reese went back he accidentally found Sarah, impregnated her and coincidentally made a better commander for the resistance which accidentally and created a perfect loop so that next time he would be sent back and meet Sarah because she was the target (what are the odds of that). Then why is the movie not about this? Why is the movie about the Nth loop after the timeline was changed? The reason is that Terminator was thought as a ST movie, but when they wanted to write a sequel they for some reason decided to allow changes in the timeline which broke the first movie.
Not to mention that it’s fucking stupid to have all your infiltration units have the exact same face and body. The first movie even showed other terminators with different faces, so why is every T-800 Arnold?
That said, T2 is one of my favorite movies.
This tries to play on the idea that skynet is terrifyingly smart in some ways, but still deficient in others.
It doesn’t really “make sense” but it’s the whole reason there’s a chance of an “ongoing” conflict between humans and skynet. If skynet was as smart as it should be, humans would be long gone.
My head hurts.
Never watch Primer.
You would love the episode in S4 of Miracle Workers which addresses this scenario.
Basically, the Terminators are in an endless loop killing Johns and being killed by them. It’s just a boring job for them now.
How do you feel about Tenet?
As an action film it’s okay, but I forgot most about the movie, which tells me I didn’t had any strong feelings about it.
Fair enough, it just outdoes any dissonance between T1 and T2 by a factor of 10, hence being curious about your thoughts ;-)
David?
Love him as the doctor.
Also Eddie furlong is fucking insufferable
I thought everyone (skynet, the resistance) thought it was ST as of T1, but that was wrong, as seen in T2.
You’ve way over analysed it. It’d be like pissing on Star Wars because the Force has no basis in science.
No, the problem is internal consistency, in Star Wars the force works the same way in all films. But imagine if on one movie someone was shown using the force to move objects, and on the next movie the same character was shown trying to reach for something important and failing and not using the force and when asked he replies “it’s not possible to move objects with the force”. That’s the problem here, internal consistency, on one movie it’s said it works one way, on the other it’s said it works differently. I love both movies, I just think T2 shitted on one of the main things from T1.
Except the prequels establish force powers that we never see again and so do the sequels. Like force super speed in the phantom menace.
Just because you don’t see them again doesn’t mean they’re impossible.
Horror films are where art flourishes and it has a huge culture of being outside of Hollywood which is just a plus. Also the acting is usually way better
I’m not sure whether to update or downvote. The first sentence doesnt seem too controversial, but hoo boy you nailed it on the second lol
Screw it, upvoted.
Most horror movies have worse acting than a porno.
There is no accounting for taste. Who’s to say what’s a better actor?!
I think you’re right and maybe that’s why I prefer horror movies so much over literally all else. And to your point about being outside of Hollywood, I really appreciate it when I don’t recognize any of the actors. It makes it much more immersive for me. Usually much better camera work and lighting too. And Less CGI - atleast the better ones. I hate it when the whole screen is just really good animation :(
Horror is a divisive genre, because it has some of the higher highs, but also many of the lowest lows.
I like The Last Jedi.
That should be controversial enough.
I think this is more popular than you think. Most serious SW fans appreciate Rian Johnson’s attempt to take the franchise somewhere it had never been before, storytelling-wise, and the shitty retcon-fest that was ROS seems to have made it better by comparison. I’ve seen plenty of people online say it’s the best aged film out of the sequel films.
Love TFA. Love TLJ. Love parts of ROTS but it’s… rough. Not a movie I’ll choose to rewatch without a really strong reason. Most of it is so disjointed. You can tell there were so many ideas that were cut from the movie and things that were put together in ways that weren’t. Then there’s that fucking dagger…
Weird you could replace the phantom menace with rots, dagger with “podracer” and your have another completely true sentence!
Remember when they snuck off on some escape ship to go get help for their crew in imminent danger and then decided to dick around on some horse racing casino planet? It’s like they completely forgot why they were there. I thought TLJ had some neat ideas but I don’t know how anyone can overlook that weird loss of urgency in the middle of the film. It’s like your house is on fire and your family is trapped upstairs, so you run over to a neighbor’s house to call the fire department, but you discover that they got some dog fighting thing going on in the backyard so you decide to go deal with that first, then you call the fire department but it turns out the dispatcher was in cahoots with the arsonist who started it in the first place, and then you return home with your tail between your legs and your mom didn’t even know you had left. The whole second act could have been a dream sequence and it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
If you rip out everyone involved in the casino planet, you have a really cool dark and surprising twist on the franchise. The only really interesting things in the whole trilogy happened in The Last Jedi
Not controversial. You like what you like.
Now, if you had said something like “The Last Jedi is a good movie.” Well, that’s demonstrably untrue.
Nah. Disagree. It is a good movie.
It LOOKS good, I’ll give you that. The salt planet with the red soil was inspired.
It’s too bad Rian Johnson didn’t get an average 5th grader to proof read the script.
For example:
Leia and Rey have this touching scene where Leia gives her this tracking gem that will let her come back to the fleet no matter where they go.
Then, in the VERY SAME SCENE, the New Order pops out of hyperspace and another character says, out loud, “they tracked us through hyperspace???!? THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!!!”
First - you literally just explained how yes, it was possible 2 sentences ago.
Second - Tracking devices have been a thing since the first Star Wars.
“TARKIN You’re sure the homing beacon is secure aboard their ship? I’m taking an awful risk, Vader. This had better work.”
No, I stand by the fact that it is a good movie. Just because it has some flaws doesn’t make it universally bad. It’s not even close to the worst movie in the franchise either. Rise of the Skywalker grabs that without hesitation (That outright is a TERRIBLE movie) but the Prequels are all significantly worse in both writing and direction than The Last Jedi. Revenge comes a lot closer and I’d say personally is tied with TLJ on coherence. George Lucas was a moron. He never had a plan but people constantly think he did. Within all three of the OT movies alone he keeps changing everything from characters to lore. The Prequels got worse because he had no one to temper him. That being said, this is about TLJ.
That being said, there’s no issue with the writing there in my opinion. Leia and Rey do have a touching moment, sure, but that was in the Force Awakens not The Last Jedi. Leia also straight up never gives her that bracelet on screen because JJ Abraams is a complete and utter fuckwit. The scene in TLJ is between Finn and Leia where Leia reveals the beacon to Finn. He asks how Rey would find us and Leia and shows him. He says “A cloaked binary beacon.” She says “To light her way home.” You are right in that the scene does continue immediately into the First Order tracking them but how they tracked them was completely different. The beacon tells Rey (and only Rey) where Leia is when tracked. But Snokes vessel outright tracked them through lightspeed itself. They didn’t check the location of her and then jump to her. They actively followed the fleet through hyperspace itself without needing end coordinates. This was shown later in the movie and Leia directly says it by saying "They tracked us through lightspeed.* Something that hasn’t been shown to be possible on screen.
Yeah. They’re in the same scene but that wasn’t an accident. There wasn’t people behind the scenes who were that monumentally braindead. That scene was written that way with the purpose of making people think that the two would be related. Now I will give you that it’s not well written how they use that throughout the rest of the movie but it was put there on purpose. It was to make people doubt Leia (supporting him through the Poe arc, which worked way too well despite the fact that he did not have a singular leg to stand on with his entire argument despite everyone and their mother thinking he was right) and seem like the clear and obvious fix. They completely dropped the ball there, I admit. But overall I didn’t have a problem with that scene specifically. Just how they used that scene. Especially considering that tracking device was never actually used. Seriously. They added in and then never really used it. I don’t know if it ended up on the cutting room floor or what. The intention was clearly to fuck with the audience because Rey doesn’t ever find the Resistance using that bracelet. She meets up with Kylo on Snokes ship and Kylo is the one who gives her the coordinates.
The logical writing progress would have been to have Finn doing his thing (that arc, I grant you, is fundamentally worthless. The whole casino segment is a waste of screentime and only manages to produce a couple of light gags which all focus on BB-8) and Poe advancing on Leias position during his mutiny. He gets to Leia and gets the bracelet, destroys it and they jump to lightspeed. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief and then the First Order shows back up anyway, having tracked them. Holdo has a scene of “I told you so”, probably just by staring at him without saying anything, and then everyone freaks out on what to do. Leia is still out and Holdo is in command so she decides to try and ram them with the last lightspeed jump of the cruiser that they somehow manage to movie magic in the last second from all the X-wings, life support, yadda yadda. Forcing the rest to evacuate to Crait. Movie continues on as normal.
The issue to me isn’t that the writing didn’t make sense. It did. My issue was that they expected the audience to connect too many dots on their own. Ended up with people making different connections than were intended. Too many things were left on the cutting room floor while stuff like that Casino segment was allowed to go on for way too long. Or the kiss between Finn and Rose which was just fucking bizarre. So much so that even Finn in that scene has a look on his face like “What the fuck are you doing?” But with all the issues that TLJ has? I still find it to be a way more coherent story and more interesting one than either of the first two Prequels. And Rise of Skywalker because that movie is idiotic. Like a good script doctor could have fixed it and made it a decent movie but they made so many weird fucking decisions and bizarre writing choices that literally nothing about it makes sense. What pisses me off is people then blame Rian Johnson for the problems of Rise too when half of that was on the studio for not being able to make up their mind on directors/writers (that movie has way too many writers) and the other half falls squarely on the fanbase for reacting as strongly and negatively as they did to the first two sequels.
91% of film critics agree it’s a good movie. That’s more than feel that way about Return of The Jedi. And way more than any of the prequels.
91% of film critics didn’t want to be on the wrong side of a rabid fanbase. ;)
The rabbid die hard Star Wars fans are very loud about hating that film.
Sure, but the critics couldn’t have known that when they wrote the reviews.
Liking a film that 91% of critics gave a positive rating is controversial?
Best film from the 9. Has a very good story and leaves you wondering what is going on. It was exactly what it needed to be and did it in some new ways with older call backs. Seriously such a good flick.
The original Star wars trilogy was overrated, the sequels were underrated, and I’d rate them all to be equally mediocre.
Not only that but the method of structuring a narrative that Star Wars popularized (the whole hero’s journey crap) has gone on to completely infect movie storytelling.
The Jedis in Star Wars are super boring, the battle for good and evil with the dark side is also super boring, shallow and uninteresting… the only thing that saves Star Wars are the set design and costume/alien designers who filled up the periphery of boring hero’s journey stories with a vibrant weirdness.
I watched and enjoyed the star wars movies but I never thought of them as great.
The sequels were rated quite well by critics, except for the final one. The Last Jedi even got a better rating than Return of the Jedi from the originals.
I agree that overall the original Star Wars films are overrated.
Last year’s DnD movie is the best film of the last ten or so years. It succeeded on every level, except in the box office.
My hypothesis is that Hasbro insisted on branding it “Dungeons & Dragons” to push the brand, and non-gamers figured it wasn’t for them. If they’d have made the main title “Honor among Thieves”, all the game nerds would have seen the DnD logo, and others wouldn’t have been turned off *. As it stands, people will find it and it’ll become the new “Starship Troopers” that bombed but shines forever in retrospect.
* See “Arcane”.
Interstellar is a terrible movie that doesn’t say or do anything special and I still don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s so amazing.
I did really like the robot guy though.
Interstellar is one of my favourite movies, yet I can definitely say it’s not perfect. Hell, it’s got a few massive plot holes and the ending leaves a lot to be desired. Saying that, I still enjoyed it. I love the visuals, the BTS stuff is interesting, but most of all it made me feel. That’s what I value in media. Other people may value a coherent plot, historical accuracy, or a myriad of other things. We all like/dislike things for different reasons, and that’s okay.
I also agree that TARS was very cool.
We all like/dislike things for different reasons, and that’s okay
Absolutely man. I gush about notorious flop Ninja Assassin elsewhere in this thread. We like what we like and I mean no disrespect.
Dude I cannot understand the love that movie gets. Even the “scientifically accurate” go-to gets under my skin. I don’t know what it was going for, but it bristles my skin when I see discussion about how great it is.
I think Interstellar has some of the best scenes in film, but it’s definitely not one of the best films overall. If you could somehow package the part about Matt Damon’s character into a 20 minute short film it would be fantastic.
I really need to add this.
A friend of mine genuinely believes that it’s based on a true story.
Man that dude is living a wacky life of he thinks interstellar is real, and still goes to his job every day
Ha, this won’t surprise you, he really struggles to hold down a job.
I thought Oppenheimer was a mess of half fleshed out ideas and characters you were not invested in…very underwhelming. And I saw it at the proper IMAX.
Nolan is my favorite director. The Prestige and Memento are absolute genius movies, I cannot rewatch then enough times. Inception is great too. But Interstellar is so boring and pointless, I stopped it after 2 hours of nothing happening on the screen. It’s hard to believe all those movies were made by the same person
Interstellar is an amazing movie followed immediately by a terrible sequel.
This post is so confusing. Do I upvote opinions I strongly agree with or down vote them?!
Upvote things that contribute to the post, downvote things that don’t. Has nothing to do with like/dislike, or agree/disagree.
Totally agree with you!
For these types of threads, I usually upvote things that are actually hot takes with some justification or unique insight. People that post an extremely popular decision or just insult something that a lot of people see value in get downvoted. Mostly it’s moderately common takes or unusual opinions with no elaboration, so I don’t vote on those.
Downvote 'em all!
Chaotic evil?
I enjoyed Sucker Punch. I’ll admit it’s very male gazey, but it’s still a fun movie and has a killer soundtrack (am a woman)
Honestly I think it has a good story about women taking control for themselves even in situations where it seems like they have no control.
I think the problem with Sucker Punch was no one really knew what it was about before watching it and ended up being like “this is fucking weird”. If you look at everything as though it’s from inside the mind of someone who was just lobotomized then it’s pretty good, imo.
Yeah I love the story and the layers of inception, but I think most people missed those details. I call it Alice in Wonderland with machine guns
The musical sequence with love is the drug with Oscar Isaac is amazing, the soundtrack is so much fun.
The Mario movie was incredibly mediocre, despite its high production value. I’m talking MCU-levels of truckloads of money spent with shockingly little to show for it.
You mean the 93 movie? I loved that!
This is the only Mario film
When I first read this comment, I thought you were talking about Super Mario Bros (1993) and was about to throw hands. Because that movie is actually good, if deeply flawed. Its flaws make for a more entertaining movie altogether.
John Leguizamo is a hidden gem of cinema so the OG Mario punches way above its weight class.
If you like the YouTube channel “Some More News”, you should check out their “movie”. Yes, they made a movie and yes, it’s out there at times, but the way it ties real world to the 1990s Mario Bros movie is so fragmented that when they finally connect all the dots, it’s a mind blow!
Mediocre is too kind. The Mario movie was bad.
I took my kids. They kind of enjoyed it, but forgot about it almost immediately.
Huge Mario fan here, I unironically think the 90s movie is better.
I wasn’t even born when that movie came out so don’t “hur durr nostalgia” me
I finally watched it after hearing good things and wow, yep. Incredibly mediocre, cashing in on nostalgia.
I did enjoy the music, though, but probably mostly because of nostalgia and my love for NES/SNES Mario games.
Funny you mention the MCU because the audience for those movies is practically the same. For everything I’ve read and seen it basically sounds like a animated MCU movie
Removed by mod
I can’t speak to its reception with film critics, but the word of mouth opinions I heard were very positive. It was also nominated for a number of Oscars.
The original Blade Runner movie is not nearly as good as the sequel. The sequel highlights how lesser the original’s plot was. We overly praise the first one because of the Tear in the Rain Speech.
I loved the original, when I had only seen the TV cut which doesn’t include the protagonist committing rape. I’ve seen the full version all of once and that just broke it for me.
I have the sequel on my to-watch list, but will be starting it off in a guarded manner.
I have tried to watch the original like three times and I fall asleep every time.
The Breakfast Club is overrated
Napoleon Dynamite is garbage.
it’s actually spelled film
Blade runner 2049 was a boring slideshow of backdrops with the “bwaaa” music overlaying it and occasionally plot happened. What plot is that? I don’t fucking remember.
Ill upvote you, because its an appropriatly unpopular opinion, but ill have you know I’m truly offended.
Painfully upvotes
The OG Blade Runner is one of my favorite movies. The 2049 sequel might as well have been a freebie with a box of cereal. Just a marketing gimmick.
Damn. This comment is more insulting than the first one.
